


Beneath Broken Stars

by jennajuicebox



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Eating Disorders, F/F, F/M, Foster Care, Katniss and Peeta being idiots, Katniss getting into trouble as usual, Mutual Pining, Self-Harm, Starvation, two cute idiots
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-13
Updated: 2019-07-12
Packaged: 2020-06-27 08:05:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19786720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jennajuicebox/pseuds/jennajuicebox
Summary: There are billions of people on the earth. She has crossed the entire country. She had given up any hope of having anything in New York. She was so certain she didn’t know a soul in San Francisco. Out of all of the street corners she could be standing on? How could it be?What are the odds?





	Beneath Broken Stars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shannon17](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shannon17/gifts).



> A huge thank you to Lovely-tothe-Bone for Betaing. She's a unicorn princess and I adore her. Thank you darling!!

The doctors had told her mother she wouldn’t survive.

They had radioed the lifeflight and told them not to bother. The nurse had sneered at her mother, a delicate eighteen year old with mascara running down her cheeks. Her mother had tilted her chin upward in defiance.

“You can’t possibly know that.” She had whispered.

Turns out her mother was right. Katniss came into the world kicking and screaming. She spent nearly five months in the neonatal unit on a breathing tube with white gauze taped over her eyes, but survive she did.

Katniss doesn’t remember that, of course. But every year her mother would crawl between her sheets and whisper the story to her in the dead of night.

In the years after her mother died, she would clutch the memory to her chest. hold onto it with all she had. She would listen to the ragged breathing coming from the bunk across from hers and pretend it was her mother’s.

Not dead.

Only sleeping.

______________________________________________

  
  


_ Katniss is covered in blood. _

_ Her hands, her face, her hair, it is sprayed across the front of her shirt and caked under her fingernails. Her shoes squelch and leave behind copper footprints on the sterile white tile floor as she jolts away from a man in scrubs that touches her shoulder gently. _

_ “Can I show you where the waiting room is?” He asks. _

_ Katniss glares up at him. _

_ “I know where it is.” She sniffs but makes no move to turn down the hallway. She should, her sister is waiting there. _

_ “Okay, well, this is a hospital and we are very busy-” _

_ “Is she dead?” _

_ He seems shocked by the plainness of her voice. His eyes soften and Katniss feels her lips peel away from her teeth at the sight. Katniss scoffs. She doesn’t need his pity. She has been looking after herself and her sister far longer than he realizes. She doesn’t need him to sugar coat it. She isn’t a baby. _

_ “No, sweetheart.” His hand squeezes her shoulder gently. Katniss takes a big step back and he sighs. “No, she isn’t dead.” _

_ “But she is going to die.” Katniss tilts her chin up defiantly. “She’s lost too much blood.”  _

_ Katniss watches the man’s shoulders curl forward. It looks human and Katniss has had enough of humanity for tonight. Her eyes flit to the jelly bracelets around her wrist, black and pink, she twists them between her fingers, watching as dried flecks of blood float to the floor. _

_ “Maybe.” The man relents. He looks like he has just told her santa wasn’t real. Katniss should let him off the hook, turn and go back to the waiting room but the fact is her mother is alone in the room just beyond him and when she finally goes back, Prim would want a status update. She would want to know if her mother smiled or cried or finally opened her eyes. _

_ And this man is in her way. _

_ “Can I see her?” _

_ The man fidgets nervously. Katniss twists her bracelet around her finger tighter, until her fingertip goes numb. She looks back up in time to see him wiping his sweaty palms on his scrub pants. _

_ “You need to go back and wait with your sister.” He pushes her back out the door quickly, the door snaps shut behind her and locks. Katniss reaches up and tries the knob. It doesn’t budge. A safety precaution in a post- 9/11 world. A way to keep the world out. Katniss digs the bloody toe of her chuck taylor into the carpet and sighs. _

_ In the glaring unnatural fluorescent lighting Katniss catches sight of her sister, curled up in a chair like a kitten. Her head resting on the balled up jean jacket Katniss shoved at her. Outside the world is drenched in night. An endless blackness that swallows everything in its path. But her sister is safe in the light. _

_ For now. _

  
  
  


___________________________________

  
  
  


The woman Katniss lived with the last six months before she turned sixteen was nice if not a little eccentric. She was quiet, kept the place clean, and they all got fed at least twice a day. As far as foster homes go it wasn’t bad at all. Mags was her name and she rarely spoke but she could knit and sometimes she would take the younger ones to the ice rink and let them skate.

Katniss keeps her grades up and is always inside by curfew. The woman never bothers her. Katniss likes it that way.

But Mags is aging and Katniss watches her swollen fingers as she cooks breakfast every morning and she knows. It can’t last.

So Katniss shoves what little she has left into a black trash bag and spends one last night in the safety of her bunk bed with her headphones shoved over her ears. She turns the volume up so loud that she can’t hear the crashing of her heart. Her eyes slide shut and the shadows of a life long gone dance behind her eyelids.

_______________________________________

  
  


Katniss doesn’t know how but Mags knows she is leaving.

Mags is sitting at the kitchen table rolling a mug of coffee between her palms. 

“Here.” Mags mumbles without preamble, handing her a crisp white envelope. A pat on the cheek and the woman sniffs. She points at Katniss then the envelope and then her own heart. Katniss swallows painfully as her eyes dart away. Then Mags whispers something tearfully. Katniss can’t be sure of what she is saying, not really, but she thinks she hears a name she hasn’t dared think of in over three years. 

“Thanks, Mags.” 

“Find her.” 

Mags presses a dry kiss against her cheek and turns and walks out of the room. Katniss strains to hear the shuffle of her house shoes against the linoleum long after she is gone. Until there is nothing left to do but leave. 

____________________________________

  
  


Katniss waits until she is on the sidewalk to peek inside the envelope. Katniss pulls out a bus ticket then five crisp twenties and a piece of binder paper folded neatly in half with a name and a phone number scribbled in Mag’s neat cursive. 

“Haymitch Abernathy.” Katniss whispers the name to herself. She isn’t sure if it a plea or a prayer. 

__________________________________________

  
  
  


The ticket is one way.

There is no coming back.

She slumps against a vending machine to wait.

Katniss narrows her eyes as she watches the people that pass her by. Business men in suits and women that clutch their children as they hurry them along. Junkies sleeping on the pew like benches. Katniss stuffs the envelope back into her pocket and digs through her trash bag until her fingers hit the slick plastic of her old, dusty walkman. Her sole prized possession. She sticks the earbuds in and lets the music take over. Content to let the Dropkick Murphys work her heartbeat to a fever pitch.

  
  


______________________________________

The world is a blur.

Katniss traces out the name in the condensation on the window.

A name short and sweet. A flower. Her mother liked flower names. It’s one of the few things she remembers about her.

Katniss presses her forehead against the glass and watches the farmland passed her by in a blurry brown. Lulled into a half-sleep by the wheels beneath her.

  
  


_________________________________________

  
  
  


They change buses near Denver. Katniss sits with her back pressed against the brick wall to wait. She gazes at the setting sun. The sky is a violent shade of orange, the jagged outline of the mountains just a shadow. For a girl that has lived in a city connected to the world by bridges for the past five years, this feels surreal. Places like this only exist in movies and books.

She is struck by how quiet it is.

The world has slowed considerably since the bus pulled out of the station in New York. She misses the glittering lights, the music drifting from the open windows, the people packed together like sardines arguing in yiddish. Murals on the building walls, bold and bright and just as beautiful as this sunset.

Katniss turns abruptly and climbs the stairs, dropping down into a seat near the back to wait for the driver to finish his cigarette.

She can hear her heart galloping in her chest and decides she hates the quiet. hates the way it fills her head with memories of long stretching freeways and bare feet propped up against the dashboard. Toenails painted bubble gum pink.

  
  


________________________________________

  
  
  


She winds up standing on a street corner in San Francisco. Katniss adores it immediately. She loves the smell of salt water, sourdough bread and decaying earth that hangs in the breeze. She loves the sound of laughter and traffic and the music that drifts from the cafe patios. She even loves the trendy yoga studios and tea shops and silly tourist traps that sell t-shirts and coffee mugs and useless trinkets, the kind of things you buy when you have a place to take them to. A Home. 

She walks slowly, trying to take it all in. 

Katniss had been to San Francisco once before. 

She remembers how it felt to have a heavy little hand in hers. An echo of a memory so old that Katniss stops dead in her tracks despite the heavy crowd jostling her around. Her fingers fist at her side and her spine straightens and she glares out at the brightly colored victorians that climb the hillsides like vines. She is certain it was only a moment ago that she was staring out at the shoreline, rocks jutting upward out of the sea like crooked teeth. Her sister by her side as they share a cone of peppermint ice cream despite the cold, laughing as they watch the sea lions that clump on the docks bark and argue. 

Katniss remembers her mother hanging back, eyes caked in dark liner, scanning the crowd in front of them. 

Katniss comes back to herself in a rush. 

She isn’t standing on the packed pier, she is standing on a street corner with everything she owns shoved into a black trash bag. 

Alone. 

___________________________________________

  
  


She finds the last pay phone in San Francisco. The receiver is busted but still gets a dial tone so she shoves her only quarter down it’s throat and punches the numbers with a knuckle. The temperature has dropped drastically in the last hour, cold fog oozes in from the ocean. Katniss blows on her fingers and stares at a wad of gum someone stuck to the metal phone box. 

“Hello?” The voice on the other end is raspy. He coughs and it’s all phlegm, Katniss holds the phone away from her ear and makes a face as if she’ll catch a cold from the man on the other end.

“Hello?” The man wheezes again.

“This Haymitch?” Katniss demands.

“No, it’s the friggin Queen. Who’s this?”

Katniss rolls her eyes.

“My name is Katniss Ever-”

“Who?” The man snarls.

“Katniss-”

“Sweetheart listen, you’re going to have to be more-”

“I ain’t your sweetheart.” Katniss hisses, fed up with this old man that can’t let her finish her sentence.

“Well Katniss, I am a very busy man and I don’t have time for long winded phone calls from rude strangers-”

“Mags sent me!” She rushes to get out before he hangs up. The line goes so silent she thinks he may have hung up. Then there is a rush of static on the other end and a whisper.

“Alright. I might have a place for you.” He prattles off an address and Katniss struggles to write it on her palm before he unceremoniously hangs up on her.

  
  


____________________________________________

_ A heavy, warm hand in hers. _

_ The feeling of her sisters cheek pressed against the thin fabric of her t-shirt.  _

_ “Mom said she was going to make breakfast for dinner.” Prim whines. “She promised.”  _

_ “When was the last time Mom made pancakes, Prim?” Katniss whispers testily. Prim sniffles and Katniss feels guilt twist her stomach as Prim’s hand jerks out of hers.  _

_ “You don’t need to be mad.”  _

_ “I’m sorry Prim, it’s just- I don’t think they are letting her out tonight. We’ll have to go back to the motel and come back tomorrow.”  _

_ “But-”  _

_ “Prim, quiet!” Katniss scolds. “We’ll come back tomorrow. Mom is sleeping anyway.” distantly Katniss can hear the steady beeping of the machinery her mother is hooked up to. The hum of the oxygen machine. It doesn’t matter how many times her mother winds up here. It doesn’t matter how much Katniss hears it, it sends some cold, wet dread curling inside of her.  _

_ Katniss drags Prim outside by the hand. They slip out of the pneumatic doors and into the dreary cold night.  _

_ “Oh, Kat.” Prim whispers reverently. “It’s snowing!” Prim holds out her hand to catch a snowflake and watch as it melts against her palm. Katniss is nearly stopped short by the sight of the big, fat flakes landing in her sisters hair, in her eyelashes. Katniss forces her eyes to look away. _

_ “Who cares?” Katniss whispers sourly.  _

_ Prim steps passed Katniss holding her arms out, palms up. Prim lifts her face to the sky and sticks out her tongue. The lights of the city reflect in her sisters eyes. Katniss is frozen in place. Helpless to do anything but watch.  _

_ _______________________________________ _

Katniss burrows down in her jacket as she eyes the mostly empty street. Stuck between a dry cleaners and an italian restaurant is a small, dark club. Katniss can hear the pulse of the music trapped inside. A handful of people are scattered out front, cigarettes hanging out of their mouths as they laugh. Katniss sneaks a glance behind her at the darkened street. 

She has no idea which way to turn. Which way Oceanside street might be. She inches closer to the group. They haven’t noticed her yet. 

This was a stupid idea. She never should have come to California. After all it isn’t like she would be here. Somehow Katnisshad forgotten the plan. The whispered words from beneath buttery soft sheets. A fevered promise poured out of her. 

_ I’ll come back for you.  _

She stumbles back. Too late. 

They’ve spotted her. A tall girl in a short skirt stares at her. Her blood red lips curved up into a smile as she whispers something to the boy wrapped around her, in a thick voice. Her words short and clipped. Russian maybe? 

The boy turns slowly and smiles at her wolfishly. An icy feeling slicks down her spine and Katniss instinctively inches backwards. Her feet shuffle, unsure if she should continue forward or if she should book it back the way she came. 

“What do we have here?” He slurs. “What can we help you with lamb, some sugar perhaps?” He drops the girls leg and turns to stare at Katniss. Something white hot and violent courses through her. She can see a thousand other men just like this one, staring at her as she passed them by on the street. She can see the men at her mothers meetings, looking at her like she is a porterhouse on a plate. 

Her lip curls back and peels away from her teeth, but the man has already turned away from her, back to the woman wrapped around him. The girl with the long, dark hair draped around her slender neck. He whispers something to her and the girl quirks her eyebrow at Katniss. 

“I’m sorry about my friend.”

Katniss whirls. It takes a moment of peering through the dark to make out anything other than the shape of him but then he steps forward into the streetlight and her heart drops into her stomach. Because she knows the rough cadence of that voice. Because-

Because she knows him. 

There are billions of people on the earth. She has crossed the entire country. She had given up any hope of having anything in New York. She was so certain she didn’t know a soul in San Francisco. Out of all of the street corners she could be standing on? How could it be?

What are the odds?

____________________________________

  
  


_ Katniss is hungry.  _

_ Dinner is a silent affair. All the other children sat around eating their bologna sandwiches and warm milk with their eyes on their plates but Katniss couldn’t stomach the idea of the sticky, dry bread and resolutely pushed her plate away.  _

_ “You better eat it.” One girl warned. “She doesn’t like waste and besides there won’t be any more till morning, she puts a lock on the cupboards.”  _

_ Across the kitchen a boy her age is watching her. His eyes are a bright, sugary blue. He flushes at being caught staring and his eyes drop to his plate.  _

_ Katniss pokes at her sandwich but she can’t bring herself to take a single bite, she is too busy wondering where her mother is. She had wanted desperately to follow the men with the body bag out the door but her sister clung to her so tightly and then the woman in the white car came. _

_ So Katniss ends up underneath a scratchy wool blanket with her stomach churning and her brain going a million miles an hour. Finally she decides she can’t take another second underneath her blankets and she tiptoes downstairs to stare at the locked cabinets.  _

_ The wood is painted a cheerful yellow but it does little to soothe Katniss. She sits cross legged on the tiled floor. Silence is the worst. In this quiet Katniss remembers the silence that hung around her mother as her eyes stared, stared, stared-  _

_ “You should have eaten your dinner.” A voice whispers behind her. Katniss starts, it’s the boy from earlier. He has on a pair of dark pajama pants and plain white t-shirt, his feet are bare and his blonde curls wild. Something hot and fierce ignites in her veins but she bites her lip to prevent any of it from spilling out. The last thing Katniss needs is to get kicked out of another home because of her smart mouth.  _

_ “Probably.” She sneers, barely tasting the word before spitting it out in front of her.  _

_ “I get it though,” He whispers, hopping up on the counter in front of her. His bare feet dangling. “Is this your first home?”  _

_ “Second.” She sniffs.  _

_ “A newbie.” He smiles. Katniss looks for the butt of the joke, sure that it is her. His hand comes up and brushes through his curls.  _

_ Kind of, Katniss thinks. The feeling isn’t new though. She is used to the drifting. The waiting. The not knowing. It is a dark sea she navigates and she, a ship being tossed, helplessly waiting to float or sink.  _

_ “I guess.” She shrugs.  _

_ He pulls something from behind his ear and turns to the cabinet behind him. He slips the something into the lock and jiggles it around. The lock clicks.  _

_ “Some of the kids hoard food so she had to put locks on the pantry,” He explains. Popping the lock off with ease.  _

_ Katniss had seen the kids. Some had never had a decent meal in their lives. It seems cruel to keep even one single bite from them.  _

_ The boy tosses a package of peanut butter crackers at her and she catches them. He digs around a little more.  _

_ “Jackpot.” He grins as he yanks down a box of cookies. He jams the lock back into place and hops down from the counter. He sits next to her, his shoulder almost touching hers. Katniss can feel his warmth radiating into her. _

_ She has never felt anything like it before. _

_ Her eyes flit upward and then flit away when she realizes he is watching her. _

_ “I hope you like chocolate chip.” He whispers, offering her a cookie. She plucks one from the package and offers him a soft smile. “Atta girl.” He whispers. _

_ She shouldn’t be smiling. _

_ The idea hits her like ice water. _

_ Her mother is long gone, disappeared into the back of a truck and her sister was ripped from her - and she shouldn’t be smiling. _

_ “I have to go.” She shoots up as his eyes widen in confusion.  _

_ “Is everything okay?” He whispers as loudly as he dares.  _

_ Katniss can barely hear the distress in his voice over the pounding of her blood in her ears. No, nothing is okay. It will never be okay again. Her eyes meet his briefly and she can see the alarm darkening those baby blues. She scurries for the safety of her bed.  _

_ As she lays on the scratchy sheets, beneath unfamiliar blankets. The memory of the boys lopsided smile filled with warmth replays inside of her head. She doesn’t understand how he hadn’t denigrated to dust by now. How this whole cruel world hadn’t beaten that smile right off his face. She should have said something to the boy. A thank you maybe. _

_ Come morning it is too late.  _

_ The woman in the white car is back to whisk Katniss away and she doesn’t see the boy with the blue eyes again. But there are golden dandelions dotting the green grass in the yard. Spring is here. And the image stays with Katniss for a long time. Longer than the package of crackers that she grinds to dust in her fist. _

  
  


_________________________________

  
  
  


“Don’t you know cigarettes are bad for you?” Katniss blurts. The boy with the blue eyes chuckles. They haven’t changed in the five years since she has seen him, an unnatural indigo that glints even in the darkness wrapped around them. He looks down at the unlit cigarette jammed between his fingers. 

“I hadn’t heard.” His tone is light, teasing. Katniss blatantly stares at him, trying to figure out if he recognizes her. There is nothing in his gaze to suggest he knows her. A polite curve to his lips, eyes crinkled with amusement. He tucks it behind his ear, like the little glint of metal so long ago. 

“I’m Peeta.” The boy holds out his hand for her to shake. She stares at it like he is a snake about to strike. Slowly he inches his hand back. 

Silence falls between them like a guillotine. The two people behind Peeta eye her with amusement, waiting for her to do something. 

She licks her lips and fixes a hard stare on her face. 

“I- Where is Oceanside Street?” She juts her palm out to show him the numbers scrawled on her skin in blue ink. He takes her hand gently. His fingers gliding over her tender skin. She is like glass beneath his touch, taut and brittle and ready to shatter.

He’s so warm. She is flooded by the memory of his soft smile. The kindness that enveloped her like a blanket. She didn’t deserve it then and she sure as hell doesn’t deserve it now. 

It is like he is made of electricity. There is a crackling energy alive beneath his skin.

“Well, would you look at this Finn?”

“What?”

Peeta winks at her and leans forward so only she can hear. She can smell the mint of his toothpaste, sweat and the leather from his jacket.

“You’re so much closer than you think.”

_________________________________

Haymitch is a middle-aged drunk with a foul attitude and even fouler breath. The second Katniss steps into the ancient victorian she is nearly knocked over by the stench of vodka, stale food and a hint of wintergreen.

Haymitch sniffs.

“So you’re the girl Mags sent to me.”

Katniss tilts her chin upward and drops her bag to the floor. Haymitch circles her insilent judgement. Finally he takes a swig from a flask he pulls from his pocket. He struggles to stick it back into his jacket pocket. 

“You on drugs?” 

“No.” Katniss answers honestly. 

He eyes the bag at her feet. 

“Annie, take her to your room. It’s been a long night.” The Russian girl touches her arm and smiles.

Haymitch points a finger in her face. “Don’t be getting any ideas sweetheart. Anything you are thinkin’ about doing I’ve already done. It ain’t worth trying to sneak out or go get yourself into trouble. I won’t bail you out.” 

“Noted.” Katniss sneers. 

“Welcome home, Sweetheart.” 

  
  


___________________________

  
  
  


“He’s all bark.” Annie says with a smirk as she leads Katniss down a dark hallway and into a tightly cramped room. The paint is peeling from the walls.

One wall is smattered with postcards and pictures. The Eiffel Tower. A river surrounded by flowers. Pretty pale things that Katniss can’t look at for too long because they make her think of- 

“He’s not so bad, He might be a drunk but he isn’t handsy and he leaves us alone for the most part. All we have to do is pass our classes and be in before midnight.”

Katniss stares at the darkness outside her window.

“Okay.”

________________________________

  
  


_ Katniss stares at the ocean in wonder. She has never seen anything so big, so vast and dark and unknown. The gray waves lick at her legs and she watches as the sea birds dip and sail and squawk. The water numbs her feet and sloshes against her shorts but she is so dazed with the enormity of it she doesn’t care.  _

_ Her sister’s giggle carries on the wind.  _

_ She wants desperately to crawl beneath the waves. She wants to feel the weight of the water above and below her. The darkness swaddling her tightly in a blanket of silence that can’t be found anywhere else.  _

_ “Katniss, that is far enough!”  _

_ Her mother sits in the sand in a red bathing suit. Other mothers are dressed in drab browns and blacks and grays. Not for the first time Katniss knows her mother isn’t like the rest of them. She is young and vibrant and when they go shopping every man turns to watch her walk. With her skin white as cream and blood red lips and narrow, high cheekbones. Katniss looks down at her thick black braid and her skin, the same color as creamed coffee. _

_ Her sister spins a few feet away, dancing with her arms out in a magenta swimsuit in the gentle waves. Her starlight blonde hair fluttering in the wind. In time Prim will be just like her mother, pretty and dainty like a flower petal . Not for the first time Katniss wonders who her father was and if he held the answers Katniss so desperately sought after. _

_ Why was Katniss different? _

_ “Katniss, come back here!” Her mother calls. _

_ _____________________________________ _

Katniss can’t sleep.

She dreams of blue eyes staring sightlessly and shattering glass and endless antiseptic hallways that wind like a maze only to lead her back to the room where they left her with the body. The woman with the pale, icy skin. 

She wakes with her throat raw and cheeks wet and Annie snoring away on the other side of the room. 

The clock blazes red in the night. 

2:45 

Katniss stares at the ceiling for a while but then she resigns herself to another sleepless night. She gets up and goes looking for the kitchen. Maybe she could find some peanut butter or something that wouldn’t be missed. 

She wanders the dark hallway coming to a room spilling with amber light. Of course it’s Peeta, hunched over the table, his eyes narrowed in concentration as he brushes a pencil over a piece of paper. 

He hasn’t seen her. She should turn and crawl back under her blankets. She can’t seem to stop her bare feet from inching forward and craning her neck to see what on earth he is drawing at three in the morning. 

He glances back, jolts, and snaps his notebook shut. 

“Boy, you sure are quiet.” He huffs. He smiles at her. Oh, his smile sends something sharp skittering beneath her skin, like a fever. “I didn’t hear you come in.” 

“I didn’t mean to disturb you.” She whispers. 

“No disruption.” He smiles. “Are you hungry?” 

Katniss remembers her mother running her fingers through Katniss’s hair methodically as she sang soft nonsensical things in her ear. “ _ Don’t wake her up _ .” Her mother whispered. Her warmth radiating around Katniss from the sleeping bag they shared on the floor. 

This feels exactly like that. 

She should shake her head, scurry away like a squirrel up a tree. 

Her traitorous head nods hesitantly and he smiles like she has shown him the sunshine for the first time. He stands and offers his chair. 

“I’ll make you something.” 

“Oh, no!” She protests but he is already moving into the kitchen and throwing open cabinets. 

“So, girl from the sidewalk, do you have a name?” 

She really thinks about not telling him. He seems like the type of boy that could use this information against her. Katniss has a weakness for a kind smile. And his is nice. There is this dimple dotting his cheek and his teeth overlap just slightly and-

“Let me guess-” 

He looks at her appraisingly and she can’t stop fidgeting beneath his gaze. He points the spatula he is wielding like a sword and tilts his head to the side. 

“Amber?” 

She shakes her head. 

“Katie?” 

She shakes her head again. 

“It can’t be Tiffany, you don’t seem like a Tiffany.” 

Her fingernail traces a seam in the fake wood table in front of her. She decides it doesn’t matter. He will find out anyway. Still, she can’t seem to look at him when she says it. He was just as dangerous to her five years ago as he is now. 

Still she can’t stop a smirk from quirking her lips upward.

“It’s Tiffany.” She deadpans.

The grin slides from his face and shatters on the ground.

She laughs, just a little, triumphant.

“You’re messing with me.” He groans, rubbing his hand across the back of his neck.

“My name is Katniss.” She relents.

She is startled by his quiet. When she finally dares to look up she finds him smiling at her softly, just like he did five years before.

“Katniss.” He whispers. “Like the flower. Neat.”

He drops a plate in front of her and sits down next to her.

“Whenever I go to a new place I like to make a grilled cheese. The ultimate comfort food.” She can’t stop the slow smile growing on her face. She wonders how he manages to flood every bit of the room with warmth. “If you’d like anything special put it on the list and Annie will get it when she goes shopping on Friday.”

He doesn’t look so different than he did when she first spoke to him, pajama pants, plain t-shirt and ratty sweatshirt, riotous curls and those syrupy blue eyes.

Say it.

She rips off a corner of the sandwich and shoves it in her mouth. It has been so long since she had something rich and warm and comforting. Sharp cheddar on sourdough, buttery and robust and making her ache for something she fears she thinks she forgot. A memory lost in the corners of her mind. It aches like a phantom limb. 

He is watching her slyly, out of the corner of her eye. 

“Is it good?” 

She shoves another bite into her mouth and nods. 

“Good.” He whispers. 

_________________________________

  
  
  


_ “Where is my sister?” Katniss asks.  _

_ The woman (Mary or Macy?) doesn’t answer her. Katniss leans back against her seat and stares up at the sky. As big as the ocean that day so long ago and just like then she could so easily be swallowed whole.  _

_ Katniss feels small and lost and helpless.  _

_ But when she lets sleep take her she dreams of eyes like a cloudless summer sky.  _

_ _________________________________________ _

  
  


She sneaks out the window. 

It isn’t terribly hard in these old houses, She ducks out the window onto the roof and then shimmies down a storm drain. She drops down to the grass and rolls up onto the balls of her feet. 

“You hungry?” 

Katniss whirls. 

Of course it’s him.

It’s like he knew what she was planning. He is leaned up against an ancient oak tree in his old leather jacket and plain white t-shirt stretched across his broad shoulders. His backpack hanging off one shoulder.

“What?” She mumbles stupidly.

“I asked if you were hungry. Haymitch wanted to talk to you but I told him that you left early so you can get acquainted with the school before class.” Peeta arches an eyebrow in her direction. “I have a banana nut or-” He crinkles the package on the pastry in his hand. “A triple chocolate muffin.” He holds his hands up, dangling a pre packaged muffin in each. 

Katniss can feel dread settle in her stomach as he smiles warmly. It has been so long since anyone had offered her breakfast. Even one as measly as this. She can’t remember the last time someone had truly looked at her let alone wanted to learn her name. The dread in her stomach flares when she remembers that she can’t stay here. 

This is a stepping stone on a more important road.

She has one mission and this boy is merely a distraction.

“ _ You know you want one _ .” He whispers in a sing song voice.

She swipes the chocolate one just to shut him up.

“I knew you’d pick the chocolate.” He says.

The dread erupts into anger. She whirls on Peeta.

“Do you always talk this much?” She snarls before quickening her steps. She instantly regrets her tone but she sets her face into an indifferent mask all the same. She tells herself that he is nothing to her. She has no cause to worry about whether he likes her or not. She shouldn’t like him because liking someone is the first step to knowing them and once you know someone, well- 

That’s the beginning of the end. It’s only a matter of time before they are ripped away from you. Katniss has already had enough torn from her. 

Peeta should understand that, he is from her world. He isn’t like the kids that roll into school in a minivan and designer shoes with backpacks and endless amounts of binder paper. They don’t understand what it is like to live in that murky dark ocean, struggling to keep the current from surging over your head and dragging you under.

If Peeta is offended he doesn’t show it. He just jogs to keep up with her and tilts his chin up. 

“Always.” He whispers, rolling his eyes. “I’m insufferable, really.”

“Well, shut up.” She mutters to the frayed soles of her boots.

“That’s no way to talk to your friends.” Peeta scolds, but he is still smiling, unperturbed by her scowl.

“Who says we’re friends?”

“You’ll see, Katniss. Before you know it we’ll be braiding each others hair.” He winks at her. Katniss can feel her cheeks flooding with color. She ducks her head and prays he doesn’t see. 

“I highly doubt that, Farm Boy.” She sniffs.

“A Princess Bride fan!” He teases. “See, I’m already learning more about you.”

Katniss feels her heart drop into her stomach. The words had just poured out of her. She hadn’t meant to give anything away and she certainly didn’t mean to give him any more ammunition to keep this conversation going. 

“I’m not good at friends.” She blurts flatly. 

He narrows his eyes playfully. 

“Well, the thing about friends is they tell each other stuff.” 

“Stuff?”

“Yes, stuff. Deep stuff.”

“Deep stuff?”

“Yeah, you know.” He inches forward. Katniss catches a whiff of his soap, crisp and clean like Irish Spring. Every instinct in her tells her to run and not to stop until she is standing on the other side of the world. Danger, Will Robinson! “Like what’s your favorite color?”

She can’t stop the small relieved laugh that escapes her. The sound of her laugh coaxes a grin out of him. He chuckles softly and she remembers that funny little flip her stomach does when he is around. It feels like a bucket of ice water has been dropped on her head. He might be the most dangerous person she has ever encountered. It is easy to forget when he is smiling at her like that.

_ Remember.  _ A nasty voice inside of her whispers. 

“Sorry,” Katniss breathes, her feet shuffling back. She has already told him too much. She told him too much when she told him her name. “If I told you then I would have to kill you.” She gives a small half shrug and tries not to let on how truly terrified of him she is. 

“I have to go.” She snaps. 

She makes a break for a vast expanse of trees at the end of the block. A park maybe. Somewhere she can crawl up into the trees and pretend ghosts aren’t dogging her every step. 

“Katniss-” 

“I told you I wasn’t good at friends!” It might be piss poor but it is the only excuse she has. Even as her hands scrape on the rough bark of the tree she can hear the ghost of her sister cursing her for a coward. And her mother is there too, whispering something soft and sweet in her ear. 

For once Katniss shuts her eyes and pretends her mother and sister are really there next to her. Their breath is the wind on the back of her neck. Their words are the pulse of her blood, both wonderful and fearful. And the shadow that dance behind her eyelids are the lives they live in her dreams.

Just out of her reach.

_______________________________________________

  
  
  


Katniss waits until she is sure Peeta is long gone before she crawls down. It is a quiet weekday morning and Katniss walks in a fog down the sidewalk. Her feet taking her where her head can’t fathom. 

She only stops when she steps onto the familiar beach. The gray waves lick at her legs.

It is only here that she lets herself go. 

Warm salt water dripping down her cheeks, freezing to her face. And when she is done sobbing she wipes her face and whispers a promise to a phantom girl in a magenta swimsuit, twirling with arms outstretched. 

For an instant Katniss is sure she heard her sisters giggle distant on the wind. When she whips around she feels her heart sink. She was never here. Its only the ghosts. 

“I’ll come back for you.” Katniss whispers, desperate for her sister to hear her.

Katniss wonders where her sister is, out there somewhere. If she is cold or sick or scared. If she is staring at a different sea with those big trusting eyes. If at this very moment Primrose Everdeen is thinking about those fevered words, whispered in the moments before they were ripped apart - and calling Katniss a liar.


End file.
